***** - Awesome!! Get in line for it immediately!!
**** - Very good! A must see.
*** - Pretty good. Could be better.
** - Dull. I’ve seen FAR better, yet the attempt was there.
* - Crap-tastic!! Avoid at all costs. Save your money for a real Dark Attraction!!!
Hauntfest (** ½)
Hauntfest is basically two adult themed haunts and one kids haunt that runs along with Harvest Fair at the Wisconsin State Fair Park. One of the Haunts is a big 3D maze, while the other is an outdoor Zombie themed attraction. There are also a few stalls with trinket’s to buy and some psychic’s who, for a pretty penny, will read your future.
I’m trying to be sensitive to the fact that it was the second night of Hauntfest and that things aren’t always up to par organization wise when it’s the beginning week of a haunt. But, in a nutshell, I don’t know if it delivered quite the scares we all paid for. First of all, the website for Hauntfest boasted that it would premier this weekend (Sept 24th-26th) along with the Harvest Fair and would have two operational adult haunts. Once we got to the Hauntfest section of the fair and bought our tickets we were told that the Zombie Experience haunt was actually going to open the fallowing weekend, not this one. That would have been nice to know before hand! Was there some sort of screw up or setback, or was the website intentionally misleading? Who knows? In the end it was disappointing that there was only one haunt working at this time.
So we ended up going through the one operational haunt which was the 3D maze. This was the first ever 3D haunt I’ve been through. These are starting to pop up all over the states and seem to be the new trend in haunts. I have to admit, the effect was very cool. While wearing 3D glasses we traverse through a psychedelic maze where incredible monster murals popped out from every wall in the black lit haunt. The 3D process was very effective and the few ghosts and ghouls did a decent job of blending into the scenery and scaring the bejessus out of some of us (Jen). The spooky bride was the best!!! The unfortunate things about the 3D maze was that the spooks were too few, outside of the spinning tunnel, the 3D effect was the only effect used (no hydraulics, no pneumatics?), there were no other motifs or rooms to the haunt, and the whole haunt was way too short (lasted about 5 to 8 minutes). For $10 ($8 w/ coupon), 5 to 8 minutes really isn’t a bargain.
If both haunts at Hauntfest were operational (as they will be in weeks to come) as we were led to believe, maybe I would have been more entertained. As for the 3D maze, it would make a great place for those who are not used to going to Haunted Attractions to start out at. Kind of a primer haunt to hit for the initiated that need to take baby steps into the world of haunts. In the end it could have been quite a bit longer, if not a little less costly. You get some good scares here, but not what you pay for compared to other area haunts.
Meadowbrook Farm’s Haunted Cornfield Adventure (****)
This was our second year going to West Bend to travel through the immense cornfield that is inhabited by the undead of Meadowbrook Farm. And we saw a bit of improvement over last year's impressive haunted attraction.
Once again we snuck through the dark and creepy corn maze that was filled with improved tableaus of undead pirates, aliens, a graveyard and several spider webbed and bat filled cornstalks. Where last year there were many odd looking dummies and mannequins made out of papier-mâché. This year they went all out on the dummies providing a far better quality to them. The actors were also doing quite a good job scaring the stuff out of us.
If there is any criticism to deal out, it would have to be that the pacing was a bit screwed up, but it was mostly due to a couple of young kids who were moping about a group a head of us. The team at Meadowbrook did their best to rectify the situation to no avail. So you can’t really blame them.
I think the consensus of my fellow haunt fans is that this is our favorite haunted corn maze to go through every year.
Terror on Rural Street (**** ½)
This puppy is a staple of our haunt visits every year. The last few years the motif of the haunt has been creepy and eerie and traditionally spooky as many haunts are. I love this motif. I’ve always been a fan of Victorian / medieval horror. That’s why when I heard that this year’s Terror on Rural opted for the new trend in haunts, an industrial / Sci-Fi influenced haunt, I wasn’t as excited. Although the creepy / spookiness of the haunt in past years was indeed getting slightly stale, I felt that the new trend of Sci-Fi taking over the horror genre in many American haunted attractions this day wasn’t exactly as Halloween influenced as a good old "Haunted House". Terror on Rural proved me wrong!
The folks that engineer and build Terror on Rural completely redesigned the show this year. Nothing was recognizable or re run from years past. The show blew us away. Though, there was no storyline, it was obvious that some sort of industrial chemical accident took place in this techno factory, transforming the living into the undead. Lurking behind barrels of toxic goo, they would pop up and out when you least expected it. Not all the actors played undead zombies, some were Special Forces troops assisting us patrons to find away out. The special effects were very impressive with a few new surprises!
I wasn’t too sure if it was a shorter show than last year or if it was so exciting that it went by quickly. In any case, I left wanting even more. Not because it was lacking, but because it was pretty darn good!
Although I miss the old world creepiosity of the last few years of Terror on Rural Street, the complete redo of the haunt more than made up for it.
The Haunted Woods at the Bear Den Zoo (**** ½)
Simply put, this puppy is the sleeper of all the local haunts in Southeastern Wisconsin!
This was my first “haunted trail” attraction I’ve ever been through. The idea of haunted woods has always intrigued me and I’ve wondered how haunters could pull it off. Well, pull it off they did at the Bear Den Zoo in Waterford, Wisconsin. From the hearse ride to the trail, to the pirate ship, to the dark mazes, a lot of care and planning was done to deliver this rustic spook fest of the dead. This haunt had everything from huge bonfires to creatures floating above your head to huge dark “indoor” mazes. My friends and I were very impressed!!!
I’m quite surprised that there’s little publicity or word of mouth about this haunt. It deserves a lot more attention. There’s a boatload of work that was put into this haunt, without relying on overpriced props from one of the online haunt vendors. There is a lot of hand made horror here.
The only thing I’d warn patrons about is that you don’t want to wear good clothes. There’s some crawling in the muck that might need to be done here, weather permitting. The only thing I think I would have put more effort into was slightly more detail into the settings which would add to the already rustic, Texas Chainsaw / Deliverance feel the haunt already has!
If you haven’t heard of this one due to poor promotion, you don’t know what you’re missing.
The Fear (****)
The picturesque setting of Alpine Valley is the home of a ski lodge during the winter, during the summer it is a huge outdoor concert venue which has brought the likes of everyone from The Eagles to Iron Maiden to The Grateful Dead. However, this fall the dead aren’t very greatful at Alpine Valley! This October is hopefully the beginning of a haunted attraction tradition within the halls of Alpine Valley known as The Fear. The Fear is designed and created by the same people that put on one of Wisconsin’s premier haunted attractions known as Rainbow Springs Haunted Hotel. After a fire burned down the haunt, it took few years for the haunters to find a new home at Alpine Valley. Was it worth it?
You bet it was! The Fear had a lot going for it such as a theme, some great sets and some decent special effects.
The fact that they went to the trouble to come up with a bit of a back story and theme is something that is starting to become quite rare in haunts these days, and I give kudos to those that include them as an important part of the haunt. The sets were al done quite well. The graveyard, vampire club and children’s room were among my favorites. Some of the effects were quite surprising, including the floating priest, the vampire child up on the ceiling and the living wall that eats people.
The only two things that I can nit-pick about were that it could have been a bit longer and some of the actors lacked enthusiasm for their rolls. Most of the actors put in 100%, while there were a few who had all the enthusiasm of a dead lobster. But I give props to those that went the whole way with their rolls (especially the vampire girls in the vampire club scene...wink, wink).
The Darkness (****)
Originally this haunt was built, designed and created by a company called Halloween Productions then sold to the group running it in Walworth by Leonard Pickle. Mr. Pickle is more than a familiar name to those of us who are haunt fans. Not only does he own and operate his own haunted house consulting group, Hauntrepreneurs. He is also the editor in chief of Haunted Attractions Magazine (Yep, I did my homework). With Mr. Pickle’s involvement, it was no surprise that this haunt was pretty good.
From the haunt’s façade to its crypt-like atmosphere, this spook house was designed to send chills up patrons’ spines. The Gothesque settings, the special effects and lack of outrageous gore made this haunt very enjoyable. The actors and actresses seem to be really into their rolls and enjoying themselves. We were all very impressed with the halls of bones! I won’t give that away, but it was pretty cool.
The one major concern that I have for The Darkness is its future. Since this is a pre-made haunt with all the effects being created by another company, will there be any room for improvement for the years to come? Will we see any changes, new effects or even new rooms? They had a survey girl at the end of the haunt asking questions about what worked and what didn’t. So that’s a good start for doing something different next year, but how different will it be? Only time will tell.
The only other gripe I have was that, as a lot of the haunts this year, the running time is a bit short. But with a pre-created haunt, what could the group that was running it do.
The Darkness is definitely worth checking out. The question is, will it be original enough next year to check out again? Hopefully it will!
Stacey Farms Haunted Corn Maze (*** ½)
This was the third original corn maze I’ve been through in my history as a haunt fan. Lindner Farm’s being the first (see 2002 review) and Meadowbrook Farm’s being the impressive second. So, already Stacey had some serious competition. Did it live up to it? Well, oddly enough, we tried to go to this last year in the middle of October and the police were turning people away it was so frellin’ popular! So my expectations were quite high to begin with.
In a nutshell, Stacey’s is a pretty good and solid corn maze. It’s nothin too spectacular, while at the same time throwing in a pretty good scene or effect towards the end. It did take a while to get to the meat of the haunt. The mass majority of time we were walking through a rather wide pathway with an occasional actor popping out of the corn or banging on a drum to startle us. It wasn’t until we were reaching the end of the maze that they turned up the effects and tableaus a notch. The length of the maze wasn’t too bad either although we were told it would take 45 minutes, it actually took about 25 and we weren’t running through it either.
One thing that got on our nerves was the fact that at The Darkness we were told that if we presented our Darkness ticket stub to the register at Stacey Farms, we’d get a buck off of the admission. Evidently, communications at Stacey Farms broke down somewhere and the register girls had no clue as to the promotion. It’s kind of sad since The Darkness was going out of its way to help promote other local haunts and Stacey Farms kind of blew it.
Stacey Farms Haunted Corn Maze isn’t a knock-you-on-your-butt scar-a-thon, but it isn’t horrible either. Worth the price of admission, but nothing ultra special. Either last year they had a really good PR person or they had something much better.
Hubertus House of Horrors (****)
This haunt has been in operation for 20 years! It's a yearly tradition for the folks in Hubertus that takes place in a small, spooky farm house on the same property of a church and school. I used to go every once in a while, but always felt that although it had some scares, it was very much aimed to families and smaller children. There was always a happy-go-lucky atmosphere with the ghosts and ghouls at this haunt. As I became more interested in being scared witless at local haunts, I stopped going to Hubertus. Now after eight years me and some haunt-fan friends decided to return aftrer hearing some decent reviews.
The first thing I noticed that hasn't changed was the fact that after purchasing your ticket, you're ushered into the small, noisy jymnasium that houses the waiting lines for the haunt. This used to be a mjor pain since they used to allow the kids that came to play basketball while you waited. Problem being, you spent the long wiai dodging balls being thrown at the hoops. Someone with enough brains put a keebosh on that silliness, so now we get to wait in the company of a huge snack bar, videogames as well as chairs to sit in. The wait system was also improved over years past as the wait went quick and not the utltra-long wait there used to be.
The haunt itself had a bit of a bumpy start as two VERY young girls escorted you to a tent set up in front of the house. In front of the tent were a small brood of yougsters trying to be scary. But everything became a mish mash of confusion as to who we give the ticket to, if we were supposed to go into the tent and once in the smoke and spooked filled tent, where we were supposed to go. Again, I'm not a big fans of letting kids be actors in haunts. It can get silly and confusing pretty quickly.
But once we actually got into the house did Hubertus' House of Horrors truely shine! This haunt has stepped up its scare factor a bit this year by incorperating different media into it. Another plus is that each room was a scene that was acted out, not something you quickly passed through. The guides throughout the house were, as usual, a little overly friendly. This would not be tolerated in most haunted attractions, but here it is not only accepted, it's welcome. The haunt's length was alos pretty nice at about 20 minutes. My favorite room in the haunt was the very first one that had you wandering about a pitch black room bumping into "otheres" who occupied the room. But when the lights came on.... well, I won't give it away, but it was done very well!!! I might have put this type of room at the end of the haunt for a big bang finale.
It was good to see that Hubertus finally got in a good balance of scary and family friendly that won't put off either the hard core or soft core haunt fan. The cost is quite competitive also!!
This was a record year for me and my other haunt fans in the fact that we hit the most haunts this year than we ever have in the past...a whopping EIGHT!!!
Not only was this a great year in the amount of haunts we hit, it was also a great year for the quality of haunts we went through. There was only one haunt that we were dissapointed in (Hauntfest). And that was mainly due to not having their act together in time. But the rest all did a great job! Obviously there were many we wanted to get to, but ran out of time (Hartford JC's, Mayhem on Main Street, The Burial Ground, Blood City). But we hit the ones we were all really interested in. Terror on Rural Street and The Haunted Woods at the Bear Den Zoo were the big hits this year!
I'm hoping we can have as good of luck next year! See you in 2005!
